So my PC has been going a little on the slow side over the past few weeks, as such I did the usual OS re-install. This time though, rather than just putting what I wanted to keep on an external drive then deleting everything and re-installing, I took a different approach. Firstly I ordered a Samsung EcoGreen F2 1TB SATAII Hard Drive from eBuyer. It arrived this morning, so I had to decide exactly what I was going to do. In the end, I settled on installing good old reliable Windows XP (again).

As good as it is though I have a few rants (move onto the next paragraph if you don’t want to hear them ;)).

Firstly, why does it tell me the install is going to take 39 minutes when it only took 18 minutes.

Secondly, why does the bloody Internet activation never work for me; The last thing I really want to do is call Microsoft and have to go through some stupidly, excessively, ridiculouslylong process to activate. To be quite honest it would have been easier for me to hack it than use my legitimate key…

Thirdly, Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), WTF, It would be an advantage if it didn’t bug me to verify myself constantly. Just back of f 5 mins while I install my graphics drivers so I can get out of 800×600 OK?

So anyway, back to the real point of this post. Since I now had my new install on a different physical drive to my old install, I couldn’t really be bothered to move 32GB’s of media over to my new drive (from a pure time perspective). As some of you may know, in the Unix world there exist these magical things called symlinks. So unknown to me, Microsoft have supported their own version of symlinks called “junctions” since Windows 2000 (apparently); via an un-documented API. I found a great little app called “Junction Link Magic” which allows you to create symlinks junctions with a very usable GUI. I created a symlink so that the “My Music” directory on my new install linked to the “My Music” directory on my old install. That way when I now opened the directory on my new install I had easy access to all of my music. I installed iTunes and it instantly picked up all of my media and worked exactly as it did on my old install. I can’t wait to find more helpful uses for them 🙂